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The World Trade Center: One family's connection By CLEVE TWITCHELL For most Rogue Valley residents, the World Trade Center was an imposing structure on the New York skyline. For me, it meant more than that. My family had a connection with the twin towers and the organization that ran it. My father, Hanford M. Twitchell, was a lifelong real estate broker in New York City. He negotiated one of the first leases for space in the World Trade Center, before it opened. My grandfather, Herbert K. Twitchell, served on the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey back in the 1920s. Originally created to run the greater New York area's bridges, tunnels and airports, the Port Authority would later build the World Trade Center. So you could say a significant part of Twitchell family history went up in smoke and flames on Sept. 11. I was born and raised in Manhattan, but left in 1955 and moved to Medford in 1961. I remember my father speaking with excitement about plans for the World Trade Center. On one of my visits "back home" in the late 1960s, he took me and others in the family to see the construction site. I remember viewing a huge hole in the ground that would later house the foundation of the center. There was a subway line running through the site and workers had preserved and supported the tube through which trains ran. The tube almost seemed suspended in mid-air. It was quite a sight. While the center was still under construction, my father negotiated a lease with a bank for space. When I was called upon to write my dad's obituary in 1980, I checked with a Port Authority official he had known. From him I learned that my father's lease was the first to be finalized for space on the World Trade Center's grand concourse, then considered the world's largest shopping center. It was one of his final "big deals" in real estate before he retired. The World Trade Center was built from 1968 to 1973 at a cost of $750 million. Later, I did get a chance to take the elevator to the top floor. The twin towers, each 110 stories (1,350 feet) tall, eclipsed the Empire State Building (1,250 feet) in height. But that lasted only a year. The Sears Tower in Chicago, which opened in 1974, became the world's tallest at 1,454 feet. Now, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia are architecturally speaking the tallest buildings on earth. The Sears Tower has the highest occupied offices and the former antenna on one of the WTC towers was the tallest non-structural point on a building, according to the Chicago Public Library. I first heard the name Port Authority when I was in grade school in the 1940s. A pickax was mounted on the wall of our family home on 71st Street in Manhattan. My parents explained that it had been used at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York and New Jersey. And that was another Port Authority project. All that was ho-hum stuff for a 10-year-old, but years later I read more about my grandfather's involvement at an age when I could better appreciate what he did. Herbert K. Twitchell, a bank executive in Manhattan, was appointed to the Port Authority board some time in the 1920s. They apparently wanted his financial savvy to help line up the bonds to pay for construction of the bridge. He did. Unfortunately he did not live long enough to see the finished product. He died in 1928. The bridge opened to traffic in 1931 and is still a landmark today. Reach editor and columnist Cleve Twitchell at 776-4486, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.